Not long ago, on a random Saturday afternoon, I was sitting at the kitchen table with my husband, Chris, absent-mindedly working on something on my laptop while he prepped lesson plans for the week ahead. It was a rare moment of quiet in our house, as our girls were in the garage "working out" - or so they claimed.
"Mom! Dad! We need you," Julie exuberantly called out. The request was accompanied by a fit of giggles, so we knew no one was injured. I side-eyed Chris. He smirked as we both got up and headed through the kitchen to the garage.
"Can you look at this?" Haley asked, once we were inside. She pointed at the weight bench. We stepped further in as the girls switched spots with us, inching toward the door.
"What are we looking for?" I asked.
"Just look on the bench!" Julie cried, as the door slammed behind them. We heard the lock click. Safely in the kitchen, our children laughed hysterically at how they so cleverly trapped us in our own garage.
"Good luck, suckers!" Haley exclaimed through the door.
Chris smiled at me. "Love that tween sass," he mumbled.
"What'd they leave us?" I asked.
"Looks like a scavenger hunt," he replied.
Indeed, our little angels had planted clues all over the garage for us to piece together.
We searched high and low, and (we wouldn't tell them this, of course) found the little pieces of paper entirely out of order. We lined them up to try and make sense of what the girls were trying to accomplish - but alas, it was just a mish mosh of scattered information.
After about ten minutes, we had all the clues. So we called out, "We found them all! Now what?"
"Did you read the letter?" someone yelled back.
"What letter?" I replied.
"It's in the bag with the final clue!"
I dug, and ah, of course, there it was.
The letter - which Julie had typed on her vintage typewriter on a piece of stationery (upside down, I might add) - indicated that we would be spending the remainder of the day at "Radar Ranch" - an all-inclusive experience that evidently was taking place in and around our dining room.
"Can you please let us out?"
Shrieking ensued, as they finished setting up Radar Ranch (named after Julie's favorite horse in Cape Cod). When we were released from our garage, we found our dining room table set for two - a lunch date for Chris and I to enjoy with the girls as our servers. A fine selection of options boasted such delicacies as "fruit snacks," "toast with butter," and "leftover pizza" to grace our palates, and no more lesson planning or work of any kind would occur for the remainder of the afternoon.
Really, though, how could you say no to this?
We couldn't. Instead, we surrendered to it. We spent the rest of the day following the activity schedule, riding hobby horses around our backyard, learning how to draw a horse and playing charades during dinner. It would have been easy to see it as a wasted day, but as my children get older I've become more aware that they won't want to play with us forever. What they were really giving us was a gift.
These moments of surrender are what I'm most thankful for this year.
Publishing is no different. It's so easy to stay up nights wondering what's next on the horizon. When will I get my next book deal? When will my cover art be finalized? What will my next tour look like? Work, write, work, write - When will I hit the USA Today list? The NY Times? When will I find my book in an airport bookstore?
I lose valuable moments - of sleep, of day-job work, and yes, of hobby horsing - asking myself these questions.
The truth is, the answers don't matter. What matters is this moment, right now. I've only been a published author for a year and a half. It feels like a lifetime already, but it's been just 18 months since my debut novel hit bookstores. And I've learned enough to fill a whole library of textbooks in that time. But I'll never get to go back and feel the same rush of finding the perfect agent, or hearing that we got a three-book deal, or having my debut novel receive a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Those firsts are over now. Sometimes, it's hard to believe that more firsts will come - but they will. Because life goes on. Time marches forward. And there's nothing you can do about it.
One day, our girls won't want to play charades with us anymore. They won't want to serve us cold cereal at a table setting with three different forks and a wine glass.
And I'll miss it.
So, for now, I'm thankful for this quiet, seemingly wasted moment in my publishing journey. Because one day I'll look back and realize that while I was busy looking into the future, the present was really quite spectacular.
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